Communicative and pragmatic peculiarities of euphemisms in Russian and Uzbek languages

Abstract

The object of the research is the linguistic means of explication, namely euphemisms, which were collected by continuous sampling from English and Uzbek dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference and journalistic publications. The subject of the research is the communicative and pragmatic peculiarities of euphemistic units containing information about the moral values and ethical prescriptions inherent in society. The purpose of the research is to identify the communicative and pragmatic peculiarities of euphemistic nominations in the Russian and Uzbek languages, taking into account the national and cultural specifics of the compared languages. With the help of the cross-cultural method, we found that in addition to the uniqueness of the national context, there are phenomena in language systems, both universal and differential, including semantic universals and linguo-pragmatic maxims. The novelty of the research is a comparative analysis of the communicative and pragmatic peculiarities of euphemisms, taking into account the national and cultural aspect, which indicates the scientific novelty of the study. The results of the research showed that euphemism is not just a lexical substitute, but a broader concept, a form of discursive maneuvering. It has various strategies that perform the function of non-proximal manipulation of the discursive space, through which the speaker tries to increase the symbolic distance between himself and the mentioned event, on the one hand, and on the other hand, in certain situations, the use of a euphemistic unit may be due to the desire to mask real circumstances. The research work also shows that there is no relationship between the choice of euphemism strategy in the compared languages. Another important discovery is that Russians and Uzbeks resort to taboos when dealing with death and lies, but almost never sexual relations in Russian. Euphemistic language is influenced by the cultural and religious beliefs, lifestyle and norms of its speakers, especially in Uzbek, as we found when describing sexual relations and when addressing elders.